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Churning on Campaign Reform

Americans looking for progress this election year on the issue of campaign finance reform got some conflicting signals last week. Proclaiming himself a ''reformer with results,'' Gov. George Bush accused Senator John McCain of hypocrisy for accepting donations from political action committees and lobbyists. This was clearly an effort to find some flaw in Mr. McCain's reputation as a reformer. It was also, in a backhanded way, a tribute to Mr. McCain's efforts to illuminate the issue, as well as further evidence that the issue has begun to appeal to voters.

Nevertheless, the week also brought a reminder that both political parties are preparing to engage in the same careless abuses this year that they engaged in four years ago. A front-page article in The Times reported that President Clinton is soliciting millions of dollars in unregulated soft-money donations to finance television ''issue ads'' for the presidential nominee who emerges from the Democratic primary fight. This is the same disreputable scheme his 1996 campaign pioneered to circumvent the contribution and spending limits for publicly financed presidential candidates.

This was entirely predictable, given Janet Reno's lazy interpretations of election laws and her failure to order up an unrestricted investigation of the 1996 Clinton-Gore fund-raising. Her permissiveness has encouraged aggressive panhandling for huge donations from corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals, flouting federal campaign law.

The Democrats justify their hectic harvesting of soft money by pointing to the Republicans' formidable soft-money machine. They also say their nominee, whether Al Gore or Bill Bradley, is likely to be impoverished by the primaries. Even so, Mr. Clinton, with only a year left to work on his legacy, should be finding other ways to lead than by bad example. In addition to his fund-raising appearances, he betrayed the reform cause last week by nominating to the Federal Election Commission an Ohio law professor, Bradley Smith. Mr. Smith opposes, on spurious First Amendment grounds, reasonable limits on campaign money -- a free-speech position the Supreme Court has just rejected.

The White House says it chose Mr. Smith, a favorite of campaign reform's main nemesis, Senator Mitch McConnell, in order to get its judicial nominations through the Republican Congress. But a president who meant what he said in his State of the Union address, where he called for reform, would have stood by principle. New laws are meaningless if the F.E.C. will not enforce them. Meanwhile, the fund-raiser who arranged Vice President Gore's infamous Buddhist temple event, Maria Hsia, is now on trial in Washington. Mr. Gore can do a lot to repair his image and demonstrate the sincerity of his reform pledge by urging a Senate revolt against Mr. Clinton's F.E.C. choice. Mr. Bradley announced his opposition to the Smith nomination over the weekend.

Despite all the scurrying around for soft money, both Democratic candidates have promised not to use it in the general election if the Republican nominee will do the same. On the Republican side, Mr. McCain has gone a step further, promising to forsake soft money under any circumstances. These are merely promises, but they are encouraging nonetheless. Moreover, they leave Mr. Bush as the only major candidate not to have publicly committed to ending the soft-money system.